Free to Struggle

I don't want to pretend that everything is okay when it isn't. 
I think one of the greatest flaws in modern-day Christianity is our tendency to subconsciously push a "health-and-wealth" gospel even when we explicitly are against such teachings. 
We may not expect financial gain, but we expect little hardship.
We may not expect perfect health, but we expect little failure. 

I'm a screw-up. Yes, I'm a Christian. But somehow we've changed that word not to mean a follower of Christ, but to mean someone who has it all together. 

I'm a Christian, and I feel hopeless sometimes  a lot.
I'm a Christian, and I lie and I'm prideful and I knowingly rebel against a holy God. 
I'm a Christian, and I have more bad days than good days. 

Yeah, you heard me. 

I'm a Christian and yet I spend a lot of time trying to keep my head above water. I don't do what's right more than I do what's right. I still get angry over things I shouldn't and I still give in to that voice in my head that's telling me to stop trying so hard to be good. I still give in to that other voice in my head that tells me if I could just be good then maybe it would be okay. 

I can't be good. I grew up in church, I love Jesus and I'm trying to know Him better, I sometimes feel like Paul with all my religious credentials, and yet I still can't do this. I can't make the cut. 

I think that the church has such a skewed view on mental illness these days because we've forgotten how to interact with hurting people. With people who can't hide behind the church mask and the service projects and the "fellowship". People with depression or severe anxiety aren't necessarily lacking trust. Yes, not having a right relationship with God can worsen these things, but assuming that someone who can't control their anxiety or someone that constantly fights depression is living in sin is the same issue that led people to ask if the man born blind was being punished for his sins or his parents' sin. God will use mental illnesses and we are to love those people instead of acting like Job's friends, sitting around and telling him to just get his act together when his heart was broken.

I'm not trying to bash the church. I love the church. The church is so important and does a lot of things right. I have a tendency to react the same way and the last thing I want to do is create an "us against them" mentality. I'm just begging for some reality. Because I know all 900 people sitting in the sanctuary can't all be okay. I know that some of them have broken homes and some of them have broken lives and some of them have broken hearts. I know that some of them are addicted to alcohol and some of them are addicted to idols and some of them are addicted to fear. 

I know that they're not okay because none of us are okay all the time. We're broken people. We're a cursed race living in a fallen world. 

It's okay to hurt. It's okay to feel like you can't make it one more day. Hordes of well-meaning people will tell you to "lean on Jesus" but they won't tell you that sometimes you've collapsed in His arms and it still hurts. Just because you're hurting doesn't necessarily mean you're not trusting Him enough.

Yes, He will bring peace. Yes, He will heal you. But He may not do it in the blink of an eye. Pain allows us to grow, and Jesus came to earth and felt it with us. He wept with Mary and Martha even though He already knew that Lazarus would live. He knew the joy they would soon feel but He felt their anguish in that moment and He wept with His broken children.

As Tenth Avenue North said, "Hallelujah, we are free to struggle." Do not feel like you are less because you are hurting. Do not feel like you have to bottle your struggles and pain just so you won't burden anyone else. The church is here to bear each others' burdens. We were made to need each other.

I'm preaching to myself just like I do every time I write because I have a hard time sending things from my head to my heart and then to my hands. To live vulnerable is difficult. I am still afraid to let people see me cry. But surely Christ has borne our griefs and sorrows, Isaiah says. Shouldn't we bear each others'? 

We can't heal people, only Christ can. 
But we can feel with people, because Jesus felt our pain. 

He is Emmanuel, God with us. 
With us in our joys and sorrows, with us in new mornings and dark nights. 

Let it hurt and be held in arms that will never, ever let you go.